(ZHE) — A South Korean marine exploration company claimed Tuesday to have discovered Dmitrii Donskoi, an armored cruiser built for the Imperial Russian Navy in the 1880s, reportedly transporting a cargo of gold worth an estimated $133 billion in today’s dollars.

Launched in St Petersburg in August 1883, the Dmitrii Donskoi was designed as a commerce raider and fitted with both a full set of sails and a coal-fired engine. The ship spent most of its career operating in the Mediterranean and the Far East and was deployed to Imperial Russia’s Second Pacific Squadron after the Japanese fleet destroyed the majority of Russia’s naval power in the Far East in the opening salvoes of the 1904 Russo-Japanese War.

The Dmitri Donskoii was sunk in 1905 during the Russo-Japanese war.

The squadron was then intercepted by the Japanese fleet in May 1905 and decimated at the Battle of Tsushima. Assigned to protect the transport ships at the rear of the formation, the Dmitrii Donskoi managed to evade the attacking force, but was later intercepted steaming for the Russian port of Vladivostok.

According to the Telegraph, the Dmitrii Donskoi was carrying the fleet’s funds and went down with 5,500 boxes containing gold bars as well as a separate haul of 200 tons of gold coins. The gold was being stored in the ship’s holds to stop the Japanese seizing it. Shinil Group estimates the gold would have a total value today of just over $130 billion.

The ship then disappeared for over a century, however it now appears its remains may have been found.

According to Aju Business Daily, the Shinil Group, a South Korean exploration company, has indicated that it found the ship Sunday less than a mile off the Jeodong port in Ulleungdo, a South Korean island located between the Korean peninsula and Japan, at a depth of 1,423 feet in the Sea of Japan.

“We found the body of the Dmitrii Donskoi 434 meters deep in seas 1.3 kilometers off Ulleung Island at around 9:50 a.m., Sunday,” Shinil Group said.

On Sunday, an expedition team mobilized two human-crewed submarines as it discovered what it believed to be Donskoi. The team confirmed later that the body and cannons of the ships captured via a high-definition video camera are consistent with the ship’s schematics.

The submarines found the ship’s name on its stern on Sunday, along with several cannons, deck guns, an anchor, two chimneys, three masts, a wooden deck and armored sides.

“The body of the ship was severely damaged by shelling, with its stern almost broken, and yet the ship’s deck and sides are well preserved,” the company said.

“Our discovery has finally put a stop to a controversy over Donskoi’s existence and sunken location. We’ll soon go ahead with procedures to rescue the ship,” Shinil group added.

Shinil did not say if gold bars or coins were discovered. The group plans to recover the gold later this year with the help from companies in China, Canada, and the U.K. Here is video from the moment the ship was identified:

The exploration firm estimates that there could be as much as 200 tons of gold ($133 billion) on the Dmitrii Donskoi. Shinil pledged to invest 10% of the treasure on Ulleung Island, which is a popular tourist destination for South Koreans. It has also worked out a deal with Russia, the rightful owner of the sunken ship, which Russia has said it would use the money for investments in railroads connecting Russia with South Korea via North Korea.

As for the $133 billion of gold on the sunken ship, it is anyone’s guess if it exists. But if it does, then it would undoubtedly dwarf the recent discovery of $17 billion in booty off the coast of Cartagena, Colombia.

The company said it is aiming to raise the ship in October or November. Half of any treasure found aboard the vessel would be handed over to the Russian government, which if the preliminary estimates are accurate, would amount to just over $66 billion. A portion of the rest of the treasure will be donated to joint projects to promote development in north-east Asia, the company said, such as a railway line from Russia to South Korea through North Korea.

An independent Chinese refiner has suspended crude oil purchases from the United States and has now turned to Iran as one of its sources of crude, media reports cited an official from the refiner, Dongming Petrochemical Group, as saying.

The source said Beijing is planning to slap tariffs on US crude oil imports and replace them with West African and Middle Eastern crude, including crude from Iran, Oil Price reported. China has already said that it will not comply with US sanctions against Iran and it seems to be the only country for now in a position to do this.

US crude oil exports to China reached 400,000 barrels per day at the beginning of this month, but now Beijing is planning to impose a 25% tariff on these as part of its retaliation for Trump’s latest round of tariffs on $34 billion worth of Chinese goods. The retaliation began with tariffs on 545 US goods worth another $34 billion, but Reuters reports that oil tariffs will be announced at a later date.

Energy analysts seem to believe that these oil tariffs are more or less a certainty, and now expect a reshuffle of crude oil imports to Asia. With China turning to Iran for its crude, US oil could start flowing in greater amounts to another leading importer in the region, South Korea.

“If China retaliates with tariffs on US crude, that could improve South Korea’s terms of buying US crude … because the US would need a market to sell to,” an analyst from the Korea Energy Economic Institute said.

Meanwhile, South Korea’s Embassy in Iran this weekend rejected media reports that the country had suspended oil purchases from Iran under pressure from the United States.

The US has pressed South Korea and some other nations to cut down its purchase of Iranian oil to zero or face so-called secondary sanctions. The deadline is Nov. 4 when the 180-day grace period ends.

In May, the US announced its exit from the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran, formally dubbed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, and plans to reinstate harsh sanctions on the OPEC member.

The country is the third-biggest buyer of Iranian crude in Asia, buying Iranian crude at an average daily rate of almost 300,000 barrels since March this year.

It is sad that even now, at this hopeful juncture in the history of Korea, when the end of the Korean War could be just around the corner, that we are confronted with the false claim that South Koreans cannot take pride in the democratic and modern country they have built. A country that is now generously hosting the Olympic games. A country whose president, Moon Jae-in, is bringing hope to millions in East Asia and the world. A hope that is being kept alive by his spirit of independence, his message to not only South Koreans but to the whole world, that a peaceful solution to the US-North Korea crisis can be found as long as the baying hounds of war in Washington can be kept at bay.

The recent firing of NBC’s Asia correspondent Joshua Cooper Ramo for his “insensitive” remarks while commenting on the Olympics serve to remind us not only of the general lack of understanding in the US concerning the current US-North Korea crisis but also highlight the racism and arrogance underlying US attempts to derail the peace process and how the peace process threatens their demonization of North Korea, a demonization essential to the “bloody nose” they so desperately want to inflict.

Ramo portrayed all Koreans―South Koreans, North Koreans, and the diaspora—as lackeys of the Empire of Japan and postwar Japan. He hinted that they were thankful for being colonized and exploited by the Empire of Japan for 35 years, saying that Japan is “a country which occupied Korea from 1910 to 1945. But every Korean will tell you that Japan is a cultural and technological and economic example that has been so important to their own transformation.” Anyone who knows anything about Northeast Asia would squirm in their seat sitting next to Ramo as he touched on the sensitive nerve of international politics in the region and made an outrageous claim.

In fact, Koreans are not thankful for those 35 years of violence, for the suffering that he so blithely erases. The government of the Empire of Japan “engaged in substitutions after 1910: exchanging a Japanese ruling elite for aristocratic Korean scholar-officials, most of whom were either co-opted or dismissed; instituting a strong central state in place of the old government administration; exchanging Japanese modern education for the classics; eventually they even replaced the Korean language with Japanese. Koreans never thanked the Japanese for these substitutions, did not credit Japan with creations, and instead saw Japan as snatching away their ancien régime, Korea’s sovereignty and independence, its indigenous if incipient modernization, and above all its national dignity.” (Author’s italics)

The above passage appears on the second page of Cumings’ introduction to The Korean War: A History, one of the most popular and respected histories of Korea. Since Ramo speaks Mandarin and lived in China, a country where government-sponsored TV programs zealously cover the history of Japanese atrocities in China, he certainly must have some basic awareness of the history of Japanese violence in East Asia and how the people colonized by the Empire of Japan feel about it. As the former Managing Director of Kissinger Associates, the consulting firm of former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger; the former senior editor of Time Magazine; the former China analyst for NBC Sports during the Beijing Olympic Games; and now NBC’s Asia correspondent, this is surely not the first time that he has confronted anger about the Japanese and American erasure of that history of Japanese violence, not to mention American violence.

Ramo has certainly reminded millions of Koreans of the incredible pain and trauma of the violence of the Empire of Japan. Bravo! His words have reminded Koreans of American racism and cold indifference toward them, too. As Koreans on the Peninsula move forward toward peace, his words make it difficult for Koreans to forget the heartless lack of sympathy and concern among Americans for their human rights, and his words will encourage them to not rely on Washington any more than they rely on Tokyo.

Japan colonized Korea, then the US occupied part of it. The horrors of the Japanese colonization are well known, far better than US atrocities in Korea. Cumings is one of the few established Korea historians to have written about some of the American ones, e.g., the horrors committed on Cheju Island, in Taejon, assistance with Syngman Rhee’s torture of South Koreans, the bombing of dams, and the genocidal firebombing of civilians with napalm. His book The Korean War also tells us about the second failed attempt, i.e., that of the US, after the Empire of Japan tried to bring Koreans to their knees. The Korean resistance to foreign domination and authoritarianism never lets up.

Especially now, in 2018, one cannot expect Koreans to feel thankful to Japan when Prime Minister Abe continues to block peace with North Korea by constantly screaming “maximum pressure” against Koreans in the North by tightening the belligerent and genocidal sanctions; by denying past crimes; and by not letting the issue of the abduction of Japanese by North Korea rest, even as he never mentions Japanese abductions of Koreans before 1945. Abe’s lack of sincerity should be contrasted with that of the North Korean government, who have recognized the abductions, apologized, atoned for that injustice in significant ways, and returned many of the abductees. Kim Jong-il apologized on the spot for the abductions of Japanese when Prime Minister Koizumi visited in 2002.

Prime Minister Abe is a known denialist of Japanese atrocities. Japanese kidnapping went way beyond North Korean kidnapping. Abe has yet to apologize for the Empire of Japan’s snatching hundreds of thousands of people from Korea and enslaving them in Japan; for brutal forced labor in Japan; for the enslavement of tens of thousands of Korean women assaulted in military “comfort women stations” (i.e., military gang rape centers); or for helping Japanese companies to steal Korea’s resources.

How could Ramo claim that “every Korean” has such and such a view when 25 million of them are in North Korea, a country where it is known that they are effectively muzzled. They can barely speak to us due to their country’s isolation―a problem caused not only by the North Korean government but also by the US government and the UN Security Council through brutal sanctions during the last year, in the midst of a drought and famine.

Ramo’s comments would probably not invite censure in conversations with his friends and servants of the elite American business class, such as John L. Thornton, who advised Goldman Sachs, or with his uncle Simon Ramo whose family name became the “R” in TRW, but when speaking on TV, he seems to have neglected to tone down the racist rhetoric. For some in East Asia, his comment had the ring of, “In spite of the down side of German government policies during the years 1933 to 1945 in Germany, Jews, gypsies, and gays will always be grateful to Hitler for his economic and technological improvements.”

It is no surprise that Ramo’s defenders are now beginning to sing the praises of Park Chung-hee, the South Korean dictator of the 1960s and 1970s. In Manchuria, Park had been a student of the class-A war criminal and Japan’s current prime minister’s grandfather Kishi Nobusuke. He followed the “Manchurian model of military-backed forced-pace industrialization” in the words of Cumings. Park’s career benefited from relationships with the Japanese right wing, including Kishi and Sasakawa Ryoichi, another suspected war criminal.

What Koreans need, and what the world needs, right now is for the mass media to stop hiring servants of imperial power and enemies of peace like Ramo, especially when this fragile seed of peace is only beginning to sprout. Shame on NBC.

Notes.

Bruce Cumings, The Korean War: A History (Modern Library, 2011) and Korea’s Place in the Sun: A Modern History (Norton, 1997); Norman Pearlstine, “Commentary: Joshua Cooper Ramo’s South Korea Comments Contain Important Pieces of Truth,” Fortune.com.

Many thanks to Stephen Brivati for comments, suggestions, and editing.

‘The true prison is the world outside,’ says founder of jail-themed retreat

Autoparts engineer Suk-won Kang, 57, sits in one of the 28 cells at Prison Inside Me, a jail-themed stress-reduction centre in the mountain town of Hongcheon, about two hours northeast of Seoul. (Matt Kwong/CBC)

Sun-won Kang recently spent a week occupying five square metres of solitude. He gave up his phone, swapped his clothing for a uniform of dark-blue shirt and slacks and slept on the floor of cell number 207.

He grew a bristly beard, took meals of rice porridge through a door slot and used a toilet and washbowl in the corner.

But this wasn’t prison. In work-addicted South Korea, this was his vacation.

The Land of the Morning Calm is the most overworked nation in Asia. It has the second-longest work hours in the 35-nation Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, after Mexico. South Koreans work 2,069 hours a year, compared to the average of 1,764 hours among OECD countries.

Fourteen-hour days are not uncommon here, nor are six-day workweeks. Small wonder, then, that professionals like Kang seek ways to alleviate burnout.

Guests emerge from solitary confinement at Prison Inside Me to assist in cleaning and maintaining the facility. (Matt Kwong/CBC)

The 57-year-old engineer was clocking nearly 70 hours a week at a Kia and Hyundai car plant in Seoul. This month, he was among 14 guests who paid 500,000 Korean won ($578 Cdn) to stay for seven days at Prison Inside Me, a meditation centre in Hongcheon, a snowy mountain hamlet two hours west of Pyeongchang.

Here, Kang said, he could slip out of the shackles of manic Korean life by shutting out external stimuli and focusing inward.

“I’m overworking. That’s the main reason I’m here,” he said, his voice barely rising above a whisper on the last day of an intensive zen program called The Gateless Gate.

“Today, I feel more refreshed. My mind is light.”

A feeling of ‘freedom’

This was Kang’s third stay at Prison Inside Me, which opened in 2008. Over the years, hundreds of patrons from around the country have checked in, including office workers, stay-at-home moms and high-school students. One program even hosted a 13-year-old boy.

The 28 identical cells have a window, heated wooden floors, a small table with a diary, a tea set, a yoga mat and a panic button. Though the doors are locked on the outside, participants are shown how to undo the latch from inside.

Repeat visitors insist that for what it lacks in amenities, the facility makes up in spiritual healing. The penal atmosphere provides Kang with something he feels he’s missing back in the capital.

Each of the 28 identical cells is equipped with a table, kettle, tea set, diary, toilet and washbowl. (Matt Kwong/CBC)

“Freedom,” he said.

That attitude reflects the irony of the jail-themed retreat, said Ji-hyang Roh, the facility’s co-founder.

“Locking themselves up in solitary confinement here is not a prison; the true prison is the world outside,” she mused.

The complex was the brainchild of her husband, Yong-Seok Kwon. As a prosecutor in the countryside, Kwon was working 100-hour weeks. It took a physical and mental toll.

The Pentagon reportedly plans a “major muscle movement” from the Middle East to East China, with thousands of extra Marines to be deployed. The goal is to “persuade Pacific nations to stand with the US” and not China.

According to a Wall Street Journal report, the US plans to boost its military presence in the East Pacific with rotating deployment of Marine Expeditionary Units, or MEUs. An MEU is a group of about 2,200 Marines who operate from amphibious assault ships and have their own aircraft, tanks, heavy weapons, and other resources. A typical deployment lasts for seven months and may involve missions on the shore like patrols or military-to-military training.

The report, citing military officials, does not say how many MEUs will be sent to the region. The US already has about 50,000 service members in Japan, almost 30,000 in South Korea, and 7,000 more in Guam.

In a related move, the Pentagon will expand the number of Marines deployed in Darwin, Australia. At the moment, 1,250 troops are stationed there in rotating training assignments lasting six months each year. The WSJ said it was not yet clear how large the number of additional troops in Australia will be.

The deployments will be made at the expense of the US military presence in the Middle East, and are in line with the new National Defense Strategy published earlier by the Trump administration, which sets countering Russia and China as a priority for the military. According to the report, the MEUs in East Asia will help the US “persuade Pacific nations to stand with the US.”

“I believe the [National Defense Strategy] and other guidance requires us to adopt a more global posture and this will shape our future naval presence, especially in the Indo-Pacific region,” said Gen. Robert Neller, the commandant of the Marine Corps.

“We have to be present and engaged to compete,” he said. The new defense strategy “will shape our future naval presence, especially in the Indo-Pacific region.”

The WSJ says the Pentagon sees the redeployment as aiming at “a global resetting of forces” rather than a “buildup for war.” The MEUs will be involved in patrols and training and be prepared to intervene “if a conflict were to break out.”

The US military build-up in Asia comes as Pyongyang and Seoul are making progress towards engaging in dialogue over North Korea’s controversial nuclear and rocket programs. The two nations agreed to have a united delegation at the Winter Olympics in PyeongChang in a symbolic gesture. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has also invited South Korean President Moon Jae-in to Pyongyang for what may become the first high-level summit between the two nations since 2007.

The rapprochement was made possible by Seoul’s decision to pause joint military exercises with the US, which Pyongyang perceives as preparation for invasion and a justification for developing a nuclear deterrent.

East Asia — In the latest sign that tensions may be easing between the North and South on the Korean Peninsula, on Thursday Pyongyang’s state media issued a rare declaration that Koreans on both sides of the demilitarized zone should work toward a “breakthrough” in reunification.

The announcement, published by the North’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), directs“all Koreans at home and abroad” to “promote contact, travel, cooperation between North and South Korea” in an “independent” effort to heal the wounds of the past.

“Let us wage an energetic drive to defuse the acute military tension and create a peaceful climate on the Korean Peninsula!”KCNA wrote Thursday.

This “military tension” on the peninsula, the KCNA wrote, is a “fundamental obstacle” in the way of inter-Korean relations and the end goal of reunification. Further, the declaration states, the South’s military cooperation with “outside forces” has served only to hamper dialogue between the two sides.

Pyongyang’s olive branch came as a dozen North Korean hockey players were crossing the heavily fortified border into the South in preparation for the 2018 Winter Olympics, set to kick off in Pyeongchang, South Korea, in February.

The fact that these athletes from the North will be participating in the games at all is a breakthrough in itself, one that stems from an uncharacteristically mollifying comment made by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un during his New Year’s Day address.

In the speech, Kim expressed his wish “for peaceful resolution with our southern border.” Within days, the North and South had met for formal talks for the first time in two years. By January 9, it was reported that the two sides had agreed to postpone military talks and “actively cooperate” in the games.

Despite these positive moves, the United States remains skeptical. According to reports published Tuesday, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence will use his attendance at the Pyeongchang Olympics to counter what he sees as a North Korean attempt to “hijack” the games through a propaganda campaign.

This will prevent war, not sanctions, not threats, not foreign interference. If you are not Korean, this conflict has nothing to do with you. Go home and fix your own countries, and take all them hypocrites pontificating in Vancouver with you.

Announcement comes as 2 sides hold rare talks ahead of Games in Pyeongchang next month

The head of North Korea’s delegation, Ri Son Gwon, left, shakes hands with his South Korean counterpart, Cho Myoung-gyon, after their meeting at the truce village of Panmunjom in the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas, South Korea, on Jan. 9. (Reuters)

The rival Koreas have agreed to form their first joint Olympic team and have their athletes march together during the opening ceremony of next month’s Winter Olympics in the South, according to Seoul’s Unification Ministry.

The ministry said the two sides reached the agreement during talks Wednesday in the border village of Panmunjom.

Athletes from the two Koreas will march together under a “unification flag” depicting their peninsula during the opening ceremony and will field a women’s ice hockey team, according to a joint statement released by the ministry.

The measures require approval by the International Olympic Committee (IOC). The South Korean ministry said the two Koreas will consult with the committee this weekend.

North Korea will send a delegation of about 550, including 230 cheerleaders, 140 artists and 30 taekwondo players for a demonstration, the statement said.